UK Data Service
February 2026
Five partner universities
90+ staff
Since 2012 (UKDA \(\rightarrow\) 1967); curates national data since 2003
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UK social survey microdata:
International data: survey data, aggregate databases
Census tables and individual data – current and historical
Business microdata and administrative data
Qualitative data: multimedia files and interview transcripts
Introductions to datasets:
Datasets e.g Census, LFS
Data types e.g Surveys
Substantive themes e.g Crime
Evaluating data for research
Preparing data/data handling
Basic data analysis skills
Basic software/tools
Teaching with data
User conferences
Computational Social Science
Reproducible research
Usually arising from the interaction between:
Birth or death certification, mortgage or benefits application, filing tax returns, going to the GP or the A&E
Exemples:
In the UK: Digital Economy Act 2017:
“… de-identified1 data from government service providers, excluding NHS data, as part of their day-to-day functions, may be shared for public good research”
OFSTED ‘State of the nation’: anonymised data on latest schools inspections outcomes of 22,000 open schools
Linked with the MCS, currently covers years 2005 to 2019
Data on a wide range of topics i.e.:
(National Employment Saving Trust)
Covers 1,000,000 employers, 11 millions employees
Linked to consenting Understanding Wave 11 respondents (about 12,000)
Data about:
Depends on:
Major longitudinal studies:
A few large scale cross-sectional surveys such as:
Next Steps
ELSA (English Longitudinal Study of Ageing):
Largest longitudinal study of the UK population
Initial sample size: 40K households, 100K individuals
14 waves so far: 2009-23. Includes BHPS data 1991-2009
Ethnic minority boost samples, innovation panel
Very wide range of topics covered:
Further topics:
Data on higher education loans for Next Steps participant
Information about:
Hospitalisation Episodes Data (SN8681)
Data for children in England whose carer gave consent
Data from National Pupil Database and the Pupil Level Annual School Census.
Also available for Next Steps and Understanding Society
Ofsted Reports (SN9436)-
Trusted Research Environment - TRE
Currently enables linkage between longitudinal studies and data from:
Planned
Millennium Cohort Study: Linked Education Administrative Datasets (National Pupil Database - KS1-KS5), England, 2003-2021: Secure Access
Next Steps: Linked Administrative Datasets (Student Loans Company Records), 2007 - 2021: Secure Access
Vacancy Survey, 2005-2025: Secure Access
Grant, P. (2024) The Monitored Self In: The Virtual Hospital Springer, Cham.
Silber, H., Breuer, J., Beuthner, C., Gummer, T., Keusch, F., Siegers, P., … Weiß, B. (2022). Linking Surveys and Digital Trace Data: Insights From two Studies on Determinants of Data Sharing Behaviour Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society), 185(Suppl. 2), 387-407.
Whiffen, T; Akbari, A ; Paget, T ; Lowe, S; Lyons, R (2020) How effective are population health surveys for estimating prevalence of chronic conditions compared to anonymised clinical data?, International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS) Vol 5:1